// Chapter 2: A Couple Of Dummies.

This is Chapter 2, to a story that started, right here.

"Sweet Baby Jesus!" I says and my cigarette falls out of my lips and is extinguished on the wet pavement below. I stop dead in my tracks and the rain keeps on fallin' down. A real blower. Somedays, I don't think it does anything but rain in this cruddy burg.

Ahead of me, standing in the streetlight of Sam's bar, is the little gal. The one I told you about. And she's waitin' for me. I ain't seen that dame in a whole mess of Sundays. I almost forgot about her. Almost, but not quite. There's a hole in my heart, shaped like her and although I've been tryin' to fill it with booze, it's still there. And it's still empty.

From twenty feet away, I can tell that she's leanin' against the doorway and shiverin' in the cold. The awning outside of Sam's place is more a suggestion of an awning. An idea of an awning. You would get more shelter from the rain, by thinkin' happy thoughts. I can see the dark smears of the rain on her red dress and I know she's been there a while. Probably waitin' for me.

We just stand there in the rain, like a couple of dummies.

In the shadows, I can't see her eyes, but her body language says that she ain't seen me, yet. She's just standin' there, waitin' for me. I'm so knocked down, by seeing her there, that I ain't took a single step, since I uttered one up to the Good Lord. The way that I figure it, she sees me and she's only playing possum a little bit here to see what I do. If I turn and walk away, she'll see it and know she got to me. If I turn and run, I might as well roll over and bare my belly to her. I think about jumping up and taking the fire escape out of here, but that rusty old thing makes more noise than a ragtime band, so that's pooched. I decide to wait her out. And right when I do that, she finally speaks, from under her hood and the mink stole that that jerk, Oswald, gave her.

"Cal! Cal! I knew you would come. I came down here looking for you. I didn't know where else to look for you. Come in out of the rain. Dontcha' got enough charity in your heart to buy a poor, sorrowful girl a drink?" She extends her arm to me, her delicate little hand, gloved. Big fat raindrops smack her on the back of the hand.

"Ah nuts to you and nuts to your drink, lady." And when I say it, she and I both know that she's got me. I'm a hooked fish and all she's got to do is reel me in. After that, it's all over but the floppin' around and gaspin' for air.

"It's cold out here, Cal. And I'm wet with the evening rain." She shivers a little bit, to show me what she means. I shrug and begin to take off my coat, obediant as a puppydog. I walk towards her, ready to give it over. I drape it over her shoulders. It swallows her up and she pulls it tight around her. She smells the collar, "I always liked the smell of your coat, Cal. It smells like a Man. A big, strong, man."

"Yeah, it's my new cologne. I call it 'Pushover'." And we enter the bar, to go get a drink. My big, meathook of a hand, resting on her shoulder. Half guiding her. Half being drug along.

I know, before seeing him, that Sam will never show the shock on his face, when I walk in again with this broken little dolly. And later, when I ask him for the keys to the back-room to "go count the hooch stock" he'll give them to me and never even mention that she goes back there with me. Niether one of us works for the FDA. Later, when the deed is done and she's satisfied and I'm hollowed out just a little more, I'll hand him the keys and if he's feelin' like the clergy, he'll pour me a stiff one and not even charge me for it. Purely medicinal, see?

Sam has seen a million joe's like me, shoulders stooped, caved in, walkin' in behind a tigress that's about to rip the guys throat out and then walk away, bored. He's seen it enough to know it when it walks in his door. And he's smart enough to avoid it, himself. Two slugs from a former ladyfriends .22 was enough to convince him to play it straight. Smart guy. No attachments. He didn't stick around for the other three slugs.

Me? I'm just a dumb palooka, so dumb, that he can't tell when he's headin' for a heartbreak. It's gonna be bad, this time. Real bad. I can already tell.

First, it'll be real good, for a little bit. Just enough to make me want it more often. But after that, there's nothin' good there for me. That's how it always goes. Same song over and over again, but I can't stay off the dance floor.

I should turn around and run. Grab my coat and leap out the door and hightail it to some flophouse where I'll hide out and count cigarette butts, until the sun comes up. And then tomorrow, I oughta find myself a new bar. Maybe down in Bronzeville, where the spooks play their jazz music and drink cheap gin out of mason jars. Lost in a smoke-skinned world of jungle music and pearly white smiles on all the gals there.

Sure. The whole world's fulla pretty gals. And somewhere out there's a little lady who looks at me and sees somethin' other than this crooked nose and this ugly scar. Who don't come to me, when some Good Time Charley has broken her, to take away part of me, to patch her up with. Somebody who's inclined to give me what I'm lookin' for, even if I don't know how to ask for it.

Lord, but she's so pretty. And I'm a fool for that smile and those, bright sad eyes. And those lips. I need to see them and kiss them again. I can already feel the softness of her hips on the palms of my hands.

Like I said, it's gonna get bad, tonight.

Real bad.



The Broken Jade Gambit: A Calvin Mann Mystery continues in Chapter 3: An Officer Down! Read it here!